February 28
I was pretty sore when I woke up, from all the exercise I'd gotten yesterday. I was pretty sure I'd pulled a wing muscle: a couple of times I'd tried too hard to stay on the snowboard when I probably ought to have just let it go.
There were two schools of thought on how to deal with this: either work it out, or relax and let it heal up. So I stretched out my wings as best I could and picked up my flight vest and went up for a quick trip. Nothing intense—I wasn't that foalish—just an easy, lazy trip to work the muscles some.
When I landed, I took a trot around the block to limber up my legs as well. A lot of pegasuses don't really like being on the ground all that much and haven't got a lot of endurance when they're on their hooves. It's kind of a point of pride, but shortsighted. You have to exercise the whole body, not just your favorite parts.
(Speaking of exercising favorite parts, I was hoping Aric didn't have plans for after Durach.)
My wing was stiffening up when I got back to my dorm room. I stowed away my flight gear and headed into the shower just as Peggy was waking up.
Once my coat and hair was all rinsed out, I made the water as hot as I could, and held my sore wing under it to relax the muscle. It was almost as good as a hot tub; I was so relaxed I was almost falling asleep on my hooves when there was a polite knock on the stall door.
I opened it up and Peggy was on the other side, a towel draped over her shoulder and a basket full of shower stuff in her hand. She wanted to know if I was going to be in there all day. I told her I'd considered it, but she was welcome to have her turn.
She must have seen me wince as I folded in my wing, because she stepped into the shower and set her little basket down and asked if I was all right. So I told her about my sore muscle, and she squatted down and started to knead her hands into the muscle.
At first I tensed up and she stopped, but I told her to keep on going, and pretty soon I could feel some more tension leaving the muscle.
I sighed happily when she was done and nuzzled her side, then left the stall so she could take her shower. I didn't want to, but I knew she wouldn't want me to stay.
Once we were both fully groomed and dressed, we went to breakfast together. They had omelets again, and I got one made just the way I liked it.
When we were all sitting at the table and eating our breakfast, Christine suddenly pulled her arms into her short sleeves until just her hands were sticking out. She shouted 'T-Rex breakfast,' and slammed her face into her bowl, sending cereal everywhere.
I have the strangest friends.
We did laundry next. All the washing machines were already full of damp clothes, so Peggy took them out and set them on the table. I asked why she didn't just put them in the dryer, and she said it was because there were some things that couldn't be dried in a dryer, that was one reason; plus, if she put them in the dryer that would reward the lazy person who had abandoned their clothes.
Rather than go back upstairs, we just stayed in the laundry room and talked. Peggy sat on top of one of the washing machines, so I took the other.
She wanted to know if I wanted to go snowboarding again, maybe at a better place, and I said that I'd like that. I told her it would be better if the board would stay attached to my hooves like hers did, and she told me that there weren't any boots or bindings for ponies that she was aware of. Then her face lit up and she said that she bet someone could make them, and we needed to go up and see Rebekka, because Rebekka knew a bunch of makers.
Makers, it turns out, are craftspeople. She did know some and knew that they would be at their makerspace (which is where they work) on the weekend, so once our laundry was done and we'd had lunch, Peggy drove Rebekka and me over to a run-down looking brick building.
Inside, though, it was clean but cluttered. I'd visited earth pony workshops that were much the same, although the makers had more machines.
Projects were scattered all over worktables, and when we came in there was a cluster of people watching a pair of round machines with knives on one end and balloons on the other scuttle around the floor.
I didn't want to interrupt them, so we went over and watched as the two machines fumbled around and one of them finally popped the balloon on the other. There was a lot of cheering for the machine that had won, and then they noticed me and all of a sudden everyone wanted to meet me, which was intimidating, coming all at once, and then they all wanted to show me their projects, and everyone wanted to be first, so it was really confusing.
Finally, Rebekka calmed them down and Peggy explained why we'd come.
They got to talking among themselves; pretty soon they were taking notes and one of them got out a dressmaker's tape that was made of metal and rolled up into a little storage container all on its own, and he used that to measure my hooves and pasterns and fetlocks.
They put their heads down and one of them started sketching while two others unfolded their computers and started interneting. A brown-manedhaired girl named Karen showed us around, while the boys kind of came and went as they were working. I didn't get most of their names; there were a lot of them.
Every now and then one of them would pipe up and ask me a question, like how much did I weigh and if I could produce downforce with my wings as well as lift. (Downforce was kind of counterintuitive, since it's the opposite of flying, but if you angle them just right you can do it. We learned how in flight training because griffons and rocs try to grab pegasuses alive and if you make yourself hard to carry, they'll drop you.)
After about an hour of work and a tour of the shop, they came up with a couple of ideas that they thought would work, and they said that they needed to do some more research and figure out how much it was going to cost. Peggy gave them her number and mine, and they said that they'd call tomorrow when they knew for sure.
I was surprised that it was dinnertime when we got back to campus. We'd spent a lot more time than I thought at the makerspace, although it was neat to see how humans built things. Even with all their machines like the threedee printer they had, there was still a traditional forge for metalwork, and lots of little hand-held tools.
I think an earth pony craftsmare would really have liked to spend time in their makerspace. There were lots of unfinished projects that could give her an idea how things went together.
After dinner was over, both Peggy and I had to put our shoulders into the traces; neither of us had done any of our homework yet. I got done with mine fairly quick—I didn't have a whole lot that I needed to do—and then I helped her out with her calculus.
She paid me back by helping to make my bed. The bottom sheet has an elastic band around it, which holds it in place nicely, but makes it really hard to stretch it over the bed. I'll get three corners fastened and then when I'm trying to pull the fourth into position, one of the others comes off. With her long arms to hold the head in place, though, I was able to get the foot tucked in nicely, and bounced up onto the bed happily before putting the top sheet and the blankets back on.
I read and wrote on Facebook for a little while before going to sleep. Aquamarine had figured out how to add photographs of her plants, as well as a few of her campus. It was weird; the parts that I'd seen when we dropped her off were very urban, but most of the outside pictures she had posted were of open fields, and there were lots from inside a greenhouse.
I didn't have all that many pictures of myself. Nothing that I could put on Facebook, and that kind of bothered me a little bit.
The souped up warrior roombas shall inherit the earth
Aw Silver should take pictures! Of her and her friends first, but wouldn't it be awesome if she could do it from the sky?
Is it wrong that by the two minute mark of that video I was rooting for bystander hamstringings? They were staging that in their uncleared apartment, barefoot. Only reason they didn't damage the walls, furniture and each other was because they seriously half-assed the knife bindings.
can't wait till Silver finds out how to link her youtube videos to facebook...
7155622
It's only a matter of time. Isn't this how Terminator started?
She needs a better camera. Cell phone cameras aren't very hoof-friendly.
7155648
I was thinking the same thing. As soon as they set the knife-equipped Roombas down, I was imagining the roombas going rogue and killing their human overlords.
7155726
Peggy will help her with that, when Silver thinks to ask.
I don't know why I found this so amusing but I did.
Hmm. Is "shoulders into the traces" an equine idiom, like "nose to the grindstone"?
I'm kind of surprised it isn't unicorns who would have these sorts of shops, rather than earth ponies--Earth ponies might be hard working, but I don't really think they'd be able to do much of the finer, more complex industrial work.
7155785
Have you even seen Pinkie Pie? Plus, that other earth pony with the petal-powered helicopter.
Fertile imagination plus copious amounts of alcohol equals awesome sauce? Man! I got the formula ALL wrong.
I wonder how long it'll be before Silver discovers that wonderful thing known as cyberbullying?
7155840
Pinkie Pie is rather odd, though.
7155777
I had a friend in college who would do that occasionally. It was always funny.
Yup. More of an earth pony phrase, but the pegasi picked up on it.
vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/6/6d/Big_McIntosh_pulling_plough_in_Applejack's_imagination_S1E03.png
(disregard the complete inaccuracy of how the plow's hooked to him)
7155785
I see the earth ponies as the makers. They haven't got access to a convenient magical appendage, so they build machines to compensate.
7155840
That would be Cherry Berry, one of my favorite BG ponies.
i62.tinypic.com/2wlvvhw.png
(she also owns the balloon IMHO)
7155857
The movie camera was invented to solve a bar bet. True story.The first movie was made to solve a bet (which was probably a bar bet).
7155859
Probably about as long as it takes her to discover that there are comments under YouTube videos.
7151398
I find no style of art holds anyone's attention indefinitely. You need to walk away from it for a while, forget what made you bored and even what you loved about it, then rediscover it. Like you've found it again for the first time.
7155890 Or Twitter. I can see it now.
Silver: Peggy, what's #Gamergate?
Peggy: You don't want to know.
Silver: But-
Peggy: I SAID...You don't want to know.
7155466
That is true, I will admit. The Irish and Polish today seem to be regarded as generic "white" people and not as their own individual group. So I can admit that it does change over time. The use of illegal Mexicans in his speeches could can be taken as such. My problem is, how do you identify xenophobia and racism today? I feel like the topic of it got off the rails a long time ago, and the ball has swung the other way so hard as it sounds like a paranoid opinion that everything is awful.
I do have a controversial thought that someone brought up some time ago: It's sometimes good to be xenophobic. I know that sounds pretty awful at first, but the idea behind it is that there may be a group or demographic that exhibits real or statistical violent tendencies and the first reaction is to avoid said group or keep them away. The example I got was from a guy in Romania that had been robbed by Gypsies more than a times in his country (Gypsies seem to be non-integrated Romanians and refuse to be a part of Romanian life or culture) and had learned to be weary around people that look like them and keep his wallet secured. (Gypsies look like pale Romanians, but have darker skin color and some stereotypically have very loud clothing.) Not systematic oppression, but there is a definite fear and a little bit of hate that's justified. I'm still very hesitant on that thought because on the surface it does make sense, but it's also still castigating a whole host of people as being violent or evil.
Really? Was that the 1985 airline bombings? That was around when I was born, so I never heard of it.
7155473
If that first part is true, I haven't seen documented evidence yet and I'd love to read it. Usually from what I hear in the news, the cop gets either a suspension or some kind of light sentence either way after a shooting. Honestly, it's like they're being too lightly punished at times, but then other people will go "oh they're just doing their job". I can't imagine how stressful it must be dealing with armed thugs, suicides, and close death sometimes. I'm a little conflicted on that.
It does scare the fuck out of me when a cop pulls a gun, but I don't think it's as bad as most make it out to be. I keep on finding statistics and it's roughly several thousand per year that die during an arrest, and the best one I found was I from the Beurue (ccan't spell) of Justice statistics. From a 7 year report, 45% of nearly 5,000 arrest deaths happened because of "alleged" violence that happened before or during the arrest. The other biggest ones were suicide and death by intoxication. That's still a pretty small number considering there's millions of arrests per year.
I think it's a consequence of the way voting works when the country was founded 200 years ago.
It's a confusing mess and does need to be overhauled on the whole to be simpler, more inclusive of the territories and foreign citizens, and have things like gerrymandering patched out of the system. It's a topic that comes up every election year, but doesn't seem to be fixed or changed any time soon.
I don't doubt there may be individuals that hold racist views, but I don't see how there is racist or sexist policies against minorities or women anymore in government. All colors, male or female, do deserve having the same rights and protections. There are a lot of rights groups that will try to hold the government accountable and bring up issues that need to be addressed. I just hope the policies are at an equalibrium instead of swinging one way or another to give people special rights and protections because of color or sex. One thing I have found recently is that a recent law called the Violence Against Women Act is very gendered towards women and doesn't include men as people that need to have protections from domestic violence as well. So there's still stuff that needs to change.
That.. I cannot explain. Are the higher institutions privately or publicly funded?
As for that video, I think that was a poor example to give. The videos I usually look at is from a British chap named Sargon of Akkad, and he's good at logic and debunking social justice ideas. It's how I found out about LaughingAtLiberals channel and it does seem like a place to have good evidence against this type of social justice indoctrination in universities. Recently he put out a petition to get these courses suspended until the ideas and methodology behind them can be vetted by facts and reason. (It's practically become a psuedo-scientific religion.)
7155607 I don't deny that children need to taught that seeing people by their race, using slurs, or being racist is a bad thing, but what the presenter in the video was talking about was having it being talked about constantly and force fed on a child will warp their world view to be all about race wherever they go in life. It would probably make the child extemely paranoid about being around another person of different color because they want to do the 'right' thing in their mind, from policing their speech, giving the other one special priviledges, etc. And also having the child feel shame because of their own white skin color or European\American heritage (something the presenter specifically says that white people should do). They shouldn't feel shame because it's not something they had a choice about to begin with and are not responsible for the sins of the past, only the ongoing present and their own individual actions. I think that's a very bad way of raising a child and would severly damage him in the long run.
Honestly, neither do I and it's very confusing. The only thing I can say is that it depends upon the individuals tastes of how they want to be treated. Whether you have to walk around egg shells of what you have to say, or they're so casual that they don't give a damn and have a bit of fun. I hope there's more people around like the later.
joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/my-redneck-my-nigga.jpg
7155885
Bit they also lack the dexterity for a lot of precise work.
Eeeeeee! You know, there is a magazine that I used to go to the book store every other month to see if they had. Make Magazine. It was seriously a great read, especially for people not into the whole engineering stuff. It actually made building things looks fun. I'm still glad it's going and that there's Faire's going on today.
If anybody wants to know how to make stuff, please try Instructables. I could get lost for hours on that site.
7155885
That's certainly a common line of thought, but at the same time the only time we've ever seen an inventor (as far as I can tell) was the Flim Flam Brothers, and it's pretty clear that its the unicorns who are invested most heavily in things like the sciences. They also built, presumably, the airships.
How would an Earth Pony even be able to use something like a smelter, for example? Or manipulate large pieces of steel? I'm not saying they couldn't do it, and I imagine that outside of specific areas like weather management or growing crops, there isn't any particular tribalism holding a pony back from doing whatever they might want to do, regardless of their own tribe, yet at the same time I think that Earth Ponies are probably less involved in the engineering and creation of new technologies so much as they'd be involved in the production level of an economy. Growing crops or rocks (somehow).
I mentioned this to a friend the other day that one of the big sticking points in terms of worldbuilding for MLP was that each tribe, except the unicorns, has a sort of specific role in the society: Earth Ponies grow crops, and Pegasi manipulate the weather and Unicorns raised and lowered the sun and moon--until Celestia and Luna took over. Yet it occurred to me that unicorns probably fit naturally into the realm of making stuff, simply because even the least magically gifted unicorn is going to be orders more dexterous than either of her fellow tribes (and, depending on how magic works, probably more so than humans). It would explain the role they played in society, but it wouldn't really be something you could easily sum up in a span of a few words.
7155885
Equine idioms are great. This reminds me of the 'stop flapping around the sky'. How's 'quit planting ornamentals' for an earth pony equivalent?
That cuddly pony psyche is just sweet.
Somebody draw this!
I'm imagining your Apple Honey visiting with her apprentice True Blue in tow. The latter would probably have to make sure that Apple didn't forget to eat and drink for the next week or so.
Also, new pony name: Threedee Print, inventor.
7156161
There's a difference between innovating and inventing, though. I think the unicorns are making the important discoveries in the sciences, and then it's earth ponies who are applying that to new inventions. Say a unicorn figures out that steam expands 1700 times, and says, 'oh, that's interesting,' and writes a little journal article on it. Along comes an earth pony who wants to figure out a better way to get his crops to market, and he thinks that if he puts that steam in a chamber and makes it push a piston, he can make a big wagon that he hasn't got to pull.
The problem I have with unicorns as innovators is that they don't need to innovate. They can do pretty much whatever they want with magic. The ones who need to adapt to a lack of magic are the earth ponies, so they build tools and machines to make up for their lack of manual dexterity.
I dunno; how do humans do it? Last I knew, we couldn't hold on to molten metal and survive.
img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120914184020/mlp/images/c/c8/Construction_Site_S2E08.png
(All earth-pony construction crew, too; likewise for AJ's numerous barn-raisings)
In my headcanon, pegasi are largely responsible for the weather, mail service, and make up a large part of the military. They're also the explorers.
Earth ponies are the growers, healers (all the nurses are earth ponies), and makers.
Unicorns do fiddly work (surgeon, gemwork, seamstress) and a lot of the intellectual work. They're largely the thinkers in society.
In some places, the unicorns do the jobs of the other tribes. We know in Canterlot, winter is wrapped up by unicorns, using magic. And we also know that unicorns can control the weather; Rarity did when she had RD's mark. She wasn't very good at it, but then RD wasn't very good at being Fluttershy, either (and they're both pegasi).
I think that there are some other places where those lines are blurred as well. It makes a lot of sense for pegasi to be thatchers; and of course there's going to be some very precise mechanical work that can be better done by a unicorn than an earth pony. But by and large, I think that the earth ponies are largely the builders.
7156247
Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology. Spells solve problems; if a spell to solve a particular problem doesn't exist, someone has to invent one.
It's not a mechanical solution, but it's still a solution.
What is a come-to-life spell, if not a form of automation?
7155890 "Hold my beer." Famous last words of any red neck.
Eh. At least weird is interesting.
7156247 I have a unicorn OC that works as a tinker, but now that I think about it, he mostly only fixes things that are broken or makes stuff that's similar to things that already exist. The most inventive thing he's made is probably the clockwork bouquet he made while courting his wife.
Oh my...
Oh the irony!
7155987 *Silver Glow looks up #gamergate on Google*
Silver: "Peggy!"
Peggy: "Yeah?"
Silver: "Why are gamers woman-hating terrorists?"
Peggy: "......"
This why I want ethics and unbiased journalism.
Triba- wait... She said craftmare is that still tribalist assuming that only earth ponies can be craftsmares?
She really does remind me of one of my friends.
She was what I liked to call a "casual racist" she believed in a lot of racist stereotypes but didn't let it affect how she treated them.
Then one day she called me, practically in tears saying that she didn't want to judge people based on their skin color anymore and that her previous assumptions were wrong and she wanted to be friends with black people and so on.
She was practically crying because she thought I'd hate her for being accepting... Because a lot of her other 'friends' had been less than accepting of her change of heart.
I've never had to reassure someone that being open minded and tolerant was a good change before, it was so surreal.
I obviously also told her that anyone who thought treating others as equals was wrong was not worth being friends with.
7156247
I disagree: someone has to create those spells, which suggest that unicorns are typically 'inventing and innovating' all the time. More over, even though it might be true that anything can be done with magic, it doesn't necessarily mean that every unicorn is capable of doing so. Most unicorns don't seem to have a very wide set of spells to use, suggesting either they're just not interested in magic, or--and based on Sunburst, this might be more likely--they're not powerful enough to really utilize the spells even if they had access to it.
And we have things like Tank's helicopter attachment, something that's clearly powered by magic. Whether it's just a one time thing or something on the market in general, implies that a unicorn, at some point, made it. Just as FlimFlam's device was powered by magic (and possibly uses magic to sort apples as well).
And the same (no need to innovate) is true of Earth ponies as well--perhaps even more so. For example, you say just above this:
Why wouldn't the Earth pony, someone who's naturally strong, simply just latch himself to the wagon and pull it? Even ponies like Cheerilee, who probably have no business being strong as a result of labor (since teaching isn't that sort of job), is strong enough to punch through a wall. What better way would there be than for him to just haul it himself--at least in his mind?
I think the Winter wrap up is a good example of Earth pony thinking: if something works, it works, and we ought to stick with it. It seems unlikely that a culture devoted to its traditions--to the point where Twilight gets chewed out just for trying to help in the only way she knows how--is going to be producing innovative or inventive thinkers.
A lot of building stuff requires fine manipulations too. Like making a nail, for example, or a lock.
Equestria has rocs?!
Really? No one is commenting on
? I found it really interesting that they're taught in flight school how to get away from a hunting griffon. Especially since their might be griffons IN that class.
7156649 Maybe less hunting griffin and rather griffin at war?
It doesn't take much to get her mind going into the gutter lol.
7156478
Alright; that's a fair point. I was really sloppy with my wording there.
I was thinking more in terms of mechanical inventions, rather than spell innovations. I will say that aside from Twilight, I don't think we've seen any other unicorns inventing spells. It's possible that most spells are cutie-mark related, and are recorded for posterity, and in the future some unicorn might use them for something (like Twilight with Rarity's gem-finding spell), but we don't know enough unicorns to be sure of that.
I think it's a combination. Most unicorns don't learn all that many spells to begin with, especially if they're not useful for their career, and most unicorns also aren't that good at reading or casting spells. I'd think with practice many of them could, but probably wouldn't unless there was a need to do so.
Also, I think spells are an unfair example, because they can only be used by one tribe. The train is usable by all; a new and improved teleportation spell won't do you any good unless you've got a unicorn handy who can cast it.
Whose magic? The only two unicorns we've seen with an aura that color are Lyra and Celestia. My money's on Celestia, but maybe Lyra earns some extra bits on the side by enchanting.
Made it or enchanted it. I could go either way on that, to be honest. It's possible a not-unicorn made the propellor, and then a unicorn hit it with a come to life spell to make it run. As for the Flim Flam brothers, they could be a one-off; I'll detail another possibility below.
Well, there's got to be a point where it's too heavy, unless all earth ponies have superequine strength. The MMMM cake was almost too much for Big Mac to carry (there's a video on how much it might have weighed, but I can't find it).
It depends on the tradition, though, If the tradition is hooves-on only, that's one thing. If the tradition is 'no magic,' that's another. That doesn't imply no machines, no shovels, etc. Just no unicorn spells. They didn't have a problem with Twilight trying to use the snowplow, just with her using a come-to-life spell on it.
True, but a lot of it can be done with a machine.
I think another way of looking at it is that earth ponies are largely blue collar workers, and unicorns are largely white collar workers. That's not a neat line of demarcation, but then it isn't in real life, either.
I think that the earth ponies are more likely to invent new products which can be used by anypony. I think that in part this is their natural stubbornness--they'd rather do it themselves than call in a unicorn to help, and if doing it themselves means building a machine, well so be it.
I also think that breeding may be a factor. Let's assume that the three tribes each have their own special type of magic: pegasi have air magic, earth ponies have earth magic, and unicorns have casting magic. [dragons have fire magic and seaponies have water magic] Thus, pegasi are good at flying, manipulating clouds, and maybe also at making things lighter.
But we also know that ponies can produce offspring not like them, the Cakes being the prime example. So what happens when a pony has the blood of two tribes in her? We might have an earth pony who wants to fly (Cherry Berry), a pegasus who's good with animals (Fluttershy), a dainty unicorn who's also a hooves-on fighter (Rarity), or a pair of brothers with apple-themed cutie marks who build a machine and then power it with magic.
The more I think about it, the more I think American TV would be one HELL of a shock to somebody who has never seen it before, especially daytime TV. For non Americans, the USA is just about the only country on Earth that lets you advertise prescription medicine. I'd also go w the Weird Al songs "Jerry Springer" & "Can't Watch This" (a bit dated)
As to the internet, I've got hundreds of women who want to date me (my life is living proof NO, they don't). Some of them claim to be within x distance (Now, it's getting scary). +hundreds of products claiming to improve my life in ways I never knew it was inadequate.
Silver Glow doesn't seem to watch much TV or spend much time on the internet (signs she has an actual life) but she has an American roommate & American friends so I don't see how she can totally avoid it
Gresham's Law of TV: Pure drivel drives out ordinary drivel. Hundreds of channels & nothing worth watching.
Wait, just what kind of pictures is she saying she has?! (InB4 your mental images. )
7157227
I'm not sure why one wouldn't cross over into the other realm though; perhaps magic might give shortcuts, but that doesn't imply that they can't make an industry out of it. A locomotive that's powered by a come to life spell is not really functionally different from one powered by steam, at the end of the day.
I've always thought Celestia's comment to be a rather weird one, since it seems to imply that magic isn't something that's been invented. On consideration, I can't help but wonder if what Celestia meant was that Twilight's ascension/completing the spell made the world a more magical place, as in it literally increased the amount of magic in the world. I don't know.
I think it gets at the heart of the matter though; you say that trains can be used by all, and you need a unicorn to cast a new teleportation spell--you won't get any disagreement out of me here, but how is it an 'unfair example'? Pegasi manipulate the weather and Earth ponies grow crops, both of which can be enjoyed by the other tribes even though they themselves can't manipulate the weather or grow crops (or, at least, they can't do so as well as a member of the respective tribes. My whole argument is that unicorns do the same as the other tribes--by manufacturing goods. Either directly enchanted or by using telekinesis to manipulate materials to make something, and that can be used by all the other tribe. Just as you don't need to be an earth pony to enjoy their crops or a pegasus to enjoy fine weather.
True; I don't think it's ever really been explained who enchanted the device. Having Celestia do it just seems weird to me, and given Lyra's education, perhaps she would be a better pony for it.
One has to wonder why Twilight didn't.He literally pulled a house off its foundation, though. This is why you can't let Earth ponies bake! they'll take a normal cake, and put twenty more cakes inside it!
But its a good example of the mind set of ponies like Applejack. She doesn't even question whether or not it makes sense for a town that is no longer purely Earth Pony to discriminate against unicorns, even unicorns who aren't really using magic to clean up winter. While Twilight may have screwed up with her spell, she really wasn't doing anything 'more magical' than somepony using his or her brute strength to move the plow. (Nor does she seem particularly upset with all the pegasi magic going around to clean up her winter.)
And I can't note that there aren't any mechanized clean up tools being used either.
This requires unicorns to be inherently tribist against every other tribe, though, that they only invent things that other unicorns can use. Considering Tank, who isn't even a pony, apparently can use the helicopter at will, this doesn't seem to be the case.
I actually think the Cake's foals are like them. I can send you a link to a longer write up of the headcanon I was thinking of, if you want, but it largely boils down to the Cake's being A) heterozygotes and B) there being a epigenetic influence for a foal to match the tribe of his or her mother.
I'm also somewhat reluctant to attribute things to ponies just because of their tribe, it just doesn't seem very realistic or accurate. There are obvious limitations, but those limitations are largely biological in nature--in much the same way a male can't give birth to a kid.
Now I'm tempted to write a HIE fanfic about a college age guy who, among other things, wished his girlfriend had been open to the idea of taping her fingers together and pretending to be a dinosaur.
7156640
Of course. What else gets produced on Pinkies old roc farm? We've just never been there in hatching season.
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Oh shit, is that sum muricans arguing about race an shit?
AW YEAH
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either they ask for unicorns for the finer parts, or they do like us and build machines to create smaller parts for machines
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most of our schools are publicly founded, but the really good one can be near impossible to enter since there is so many peoples wanting to go there, only the very best pass the entrance exam (well, is't more of a competitive exam, where the important part is not to ace it, but to have a better score than the others students). but most public universities are obligated to accept students who want to go there and theses are usually around 435€/year for 3 year studies and not much more for 5 years studies (numbers given by my friends studying at university), and those who are on a scholarship can get in for free.
EDIT : correct price set
7157227
I imagine that the real draw of Trixie's show wasn't that she could do magic at all - any unicorn could do that - but that she could demonstrably do more than just basic levitation and a single cutie-mark-related spell. (That, and a bit of showmareship).
Aside from her, Twilight, unicorns acknowledged to be exceptional (Sunset, Starlight), and alicorns acknowledged to be ancient and learned (Celestia, Luna) I don't think I've seen any unicorn cast more than those basics.
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Yeah, that might be true. I ought to get my Legos back out, too, and start building again.
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There's something that's just amusing about the thought of a pegasus tweeting.
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True, but a lot of that can be made up for with the right tools. Plus, I just like the idea that earth ponies are inexplicably clever with their hooves.
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Or something that doesn't need to be planted. "Applejack's out back, planting dandelions." Plus, that could be the basis for insults, too: "She couldn't make kudzu grow."
The last paragraph was sort of a prod at the artsy folk.
She'd have the best time ever there. Or Poppy (from Highway 502).
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That's a good point--I was careless in my wording. The problem with spells is that they're limited to unicorns. If you want to make your wagon move, but you haven't got a unicorn handy to cast a come-to-life spell, you've got nothing. If it's steam-powered, though, anypony who can throw fuel in the boiler can make it go.
I also think come-to-life spells have a limited duration, which is why they have steam locomotives at all.
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True, but a good 50% of the time, the end result is awesome.
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Yes. Same theme in Silver Spanner, Journeymare: she's a unicorn, so she shouldn't be fixing pipes.
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Sure, why not? They've got enough other giant monsters rocs aren't much of a stretch. Although there are no canon mentions of them, as far as I know.
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Well, it's good to know if you're grabbed by one. They probably had the griffons sitting out during that class--no point in letting them know the pony secrets.
According to the Pony Psychology series, a pegasus can kill a griffon by standing on its back and calling down lightning.
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More likely at war, although a rogue griffon wanting to eat a pegasus probably happens sometimes.
7156026 A year after the 1985 airline bombing that killed almost 300 Canadians, Toronto allowed Sikh officers to wear turbans while on police duty, and in 1988 the Canadian parliament spent a whole day discussing Sikh nationalism in India.
Now the Canadian Cabinet has more Sikhs in it than India does.
Considering thatRomani were kept as slaves by the state/church in Romania until 1843, I find your assumption of a lack of systematic oppression a little naive.
Violence towards/by police in America is weird as all hell. Any other country with that level of violence involving peace officers, on such a regular basis, would consider itself in crisis.
I am somewhat reluctant to click on too many of your links, due to a fear that Youtube will pigeonhole me into some form of alt-right ideologue. But, if I recall correctly, didn't Sargon claim that anarchy was inherently capitalistic at one point? And he considers Noam Chompsky a liberal? Going of memory is difficult. Whatever the context, that sounds like an ill-informed individual. Credibility must be earned, and such baseless assertions have not earned him much trust.
References to a Rooster Teeth show and How Animals Eat Their Food in one chapter? As if I wasn't already enjoying this story!
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So like I mentioned, I spent a significant amount of time yesterday in machine shops working on a school project. While I was doing this, I examined what I was doing and thought about how earth ponies would do it.
First, no mouths. Ever. The MSDS binder (materials safety data sheet) did not look promising. MSDS binders contain information on every potentially hazardous material in the shop. It was studded with ingestion warnings. Induce vomiting, do not induce vomiting, contact a physician, contact poison control, fatal if swallowed. Basically if it's in a machine shop, it probably shouldn't go in your mouth. Additionally, bloodborne pathogens are a risk as mouth tissue is more sensitive than skin. Additionally, a lot of processes leave the part coated in stuff such as powdered material and industrial coolants laced with metal. At best, this would result in frequent coughing fits. At worst, death. i was actually working in a dust mask for some time because i was grinding down lead.
My schools machine shops turned out to be surprisingly earth pony friendly. Operations on larger equipment (table saws, drill presses, mills laths, etc) work fine. There are some areas that have issues. Preprocessing, post processing and assembly would be difficult. Preprocessing includes things like precise measurement, jig setup, cleaning, any work that needs to be done before you can do your main operation. Post processing includes deburring, tolerance checking, cleaning, things that need to be done after the operation, but before you can move on to the next step. These are somewhat size dependent. It's probably doable with larger parts, but it gets really hard really fast if you don't have hands. Assembly is going to be a massive pain. This is where the lack of dexterity becomes a massive problem. Most of the assembly done in the shops at my school is done by hand or with simple hand tools. While you can get or make jigs to help, they're extremely specialized and are expensive/time consuming. There also tends to be a lot of small parts, even when you wouldn't really expect it.
Overall, an earth pony shop would work better than I expected, but not adaquately. A blended system would work well. with Earth ponies or pegasi doing some operations and unicorns doing some of the more dexterous work.
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Building things is fun. I know a lot of people who do that sort of thing; I've got a friend who built his own binary watch (because it was too mainstream to buy a binary watch, I guess), and one of my old housemates used to build all sorts of things, including a boat.
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One of the fan versions of Silver Spanner has her being a steampunky-type builder.
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She's a college student.
7157337
One of the running gags in my Simon and Twilight stories is that Twilight thinks every TV show is a documentary.
Oddly, most of my friends in college didn't watch very much TV. I can't really remember any that I went over to a friend's room and watched TV.
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She just means that she hasn't got any pictures of herself, and the pictures of herself that there are were taken by somebody else, and are on somebody else's camera.
Silver Glow probably doesn't realize that there are certain pictures that can't be put on Facebook.
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I don't think it would have the same range. Maybe a unicorn of Twilight's strength could make it run for the same amount of time as it could do with a full load of coal, but no longer. If there was no limit to come-to-life spells, there wouldn't be any machines like we know them. They'd just make rotating assemblies, get a unicorn to zap them, and install them into a perpetual motion machine. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
The show doesn't say that can't be done, but from a worldbuilding standpoint, it makes it too unbalanced, IMHO.
But we know that they also have wild weather, at least near Ponyville, and other tribes probably can grow crops. Twilight could certainly harvest apples effectively. Also it's canon that the unicorns wrap up winter in Canterlot.
My point is that earth ponies can build flying machines, unicorns can move clouds and walk about on them, pegasi can grow crops--but nopony except unicorns can cast spells.
It's possible it's a spell Twilight didn't know; it's also possible that the propeller is an artifact of some kind, or else uses a different type of magical power supply, like a Magic Power Crystal (TM).
All the cakes are just folded around each other. Earth ponies know about the hidden dimensions.
Do it; I'm curious.
Why can't it carry through to other parts of them, though?
I think that the unicorns put out magic through their horns, the pegasi through their wings, and the earth ponies through their hooves. The nature of that magic is different, and therefore the way that the ponies interact with the world is different.
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7157862
And Holder's Boulder looks a lot like an egg. . . .
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Oh shit, is that sum muricans arguing about race an shit?
And it's still going on.
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It's also interesting that a lot of her effects weren't properly magical. I personally think she's not a very strong magician, but she's very good at making what spells she knows really count.
And related; in a world where Twilight can make an actual flying orange and the mirror pool can make genuine duplicate Pinkie Pies, what does a magician have to do to amaze? Any magic trick that a human magician can do could easily be replicated by a unicorn, probably without the secret 'tricks.'
Me, either. TK, light, and that's pretty much it. Rarity's gem-finding spell (although Rarity's branched out when under the effect of some other magic).
7167307
This is the kind of thinking I do a lot.
Probably short-range TK on their hooves (headcanons vary on how that works, but earth ponies especially seem to be pretty good at manipulating things by hoof), and tongs. They do have protective gear; we've seen hazmat-type suits in canon.
May vary by animal; IRL horses can manipulate a lot of things with their lips, and it's possible that the ponies can as well.
If it were designed for an earth pony, it'd probably work even better. But a few minor changes--bigger, more hoof-friendly buttons, slight changes to ergonomics. . . .
Some of that can be addressed by the design of the thing--used to be cars that were built in countries where labor was cheap were assembled with lots of commonly-available bolts and screws; in countries where labor was expensive, there were specialty fasteners to speed assembly and lower man-hours.
This really is the big sticking point, and I guess it depends on how far you want earth pony magic to go. A real horse isn't going to be dexterous enough to make anything complicated . . . but a real horse couldn't make an apple pie--Granny Smith can. Peeling, coring, and slicing apples, rolling out a crust, making the lattice crust for the top--that's all pretty complicated work, yet she can do it, and so can the Cakes, and presumably other ponies.
My thought on the matter goes back to a Cold in Gardez fic:
from The Glass Blower